Speaker 1: For decades, people have disappeared in the woods without a trace.
Speaker 1: Some blame wild animals, others whisper of creatures the world
Speaker 1: refuses to believe in. But those who have survived they
Speaker 1: know the truth. Welcome to Backwoods Bigfoot Stories, where we
Speaker 1: share real encounters with the things lurking in the darkness Bigfoot,
Speaker 1: dog man, UFOs, and creatures that defy explanation. Some make
Speaker 1: it out, others aren't so lucky. Are you ready, because
Speaker 1: once you hear these stories, you'll never walk in the
Speaker 1: woods alone again. So grab your flashlight, stay close, and
Speaker 1: remember some things in the woods don't want to be found.
Speaker 1: Hit that follow or subscribe button, turn on auto downloads,
Speaker 1: and let's head off into the woods if you dare.
Speaker 1: If you're joining this series for the first time, I'd
Speaker 1: strongly encourage you to go back and start at the beginning.
Speaker 1: This is the third installment of a ten part series
Speaker 1: from a listener named Garrett, who's been sharing his experiences
Speaker 1: from a decade of encounters on a remote forty seven
Speaker 1: acre property in the southern Appalachians of western North Carolina.
Speaker 1: In part one, Garrett told us how he came to
Speaker 1: own the property a handbuilt cabin and acreage he purchased
Speaker 1: from an elderly man named Earl. After the passing of
Speaker 1: Earl's wife, Reba. That first summer in twenty fourteen, Garrett
Speaker 1: began hearing deliberate wood knocks from the ridge line every
Speaker 1: evening after sunset, he conducted a call and response experiment
Speaker 1: that produced matching knock patterns from the ridge. He found
Speaker 1: seventeen inch bipedal tracks pressed into clay along a game
Speaker 1: trail after a rainstorm, and on the night of September
Speaker 1: twenty seventh, he saw the thing responsible standing between two
Speaker 1: white oaks at the edge of his meadow. In Part two,
Speaker 1: Garrett described what happened after he planted a garden in
Speaker 1: the spring of twenty fifteen. Something began harvesting his right
Speaker 1: produce overnight with surgical precision, leaving no tracks, no damage,
Speaker 1: and no waste. His countermeasures were systematically defeated. Motion lights
Speaker 1: were avoided, a radio was physically switched off. A trail
Speaker 1: camera captured a single infrared image of an enormous hair
Speaker 1: covered hand. Examining the lens, Garrett eventually observed the visitor
Speaker 1: directly from a workshop window, watching it move between the
Speaker 1: rose and harvest tomatoes, corn, and beans with practiced efficiency.
Speaker 1: The story ended with the creature approaching his cabin in
Speaker 1: the middle of the night, breathing against the walls, tapping
Speaker 1: the kitchen window, and scratching parallel lines into the logs
Speaker 1: before retreating to the ridge. Garrett closed that account by
Speaker 1: saying story three was the one he'd been dreading, not
Speaker 1: because it was the scariest, though it might be, but
Speaker 1: because it involved his brother. Here's Garrett, I need to
Speaker 1: tell you about my brother before I tell you what
Speaker 1: happened in the woods, because the whole reason this encounter
Speaker 1: shook me the way it did, the whole reason it's
Speaker 1: taken me ten years.
Speaker 2: To talk about it is because of who it.
Speaker 1: Involved, not what it involved who. My brother's name is Wade.
Speaker 1: He's six years older than me, which means by the
Speaker 1: time I was old enough to really remember things, he
Speaker 1: was already a teenager, pulling away from the family the
Speaker 1: way teenagers do. We weren't estranged or anything like that.
Speaker 1: He wasn't a bad kid, he was just older. And
Speaker 1: the gap between a nine year old and a fifteen
Speaker 1: year old is a canyon. Different schools, different friends, different worlds,
Speaker 1: When my dad would take us on those fall cabin
Speaker 1: trips in the Blue Ridge, Wade was usually the one
Speaker 1: who didn't want to go. He'd rather stay home with
Speaker 1: his buddies, or take a girl to the movies, or
Speaker 1: work on the chevelle he was rebuilding in the garage.
Speaker 1: So most of those trips it was the three of us, me,
Speaker 1: Mom and Dad. I think my parents worried about Wade
Speaker 1: and me growing apart. Mom used to make these transparent
Speaker 1: attempts to get us to do things together. She'd ask
Speaker 1: Wade to show your brother how to change the oil,
Speaker 1: or take Garrett to the batting cages. Wade would roll
Speaker 1: his eyes in that way teenagers do like. The request
Speaker 1: was physically painful, but he'd always do it, and once
Speaker 1: he got past the initial inconvenience of having his kid
Speaker 1: brother tagging along, he was a good teacher, patient in
Speaker 1: a way he never was about anything else in his life.
Speaker 1: He'd explain things step by step and not get frustrated
Speaker 1: when I didn't get it the first time. That patience
Speaker 1: disappeared entirely when it came to his friends, his girlfriends,
Speaker 1: his teachers, and eventually his drill instructors. But with me
Speaker 1: he had a reserve of it that never seemed to
Speaker 1: run dry. Dad noticed it too. He told me once
Speaker 1: years later that watching Wade teach me how to throw
Speaker 1: a curveball in the backyard was one of the proudest
Speaker 1: moments of his life. Not because the curveball was any
Speaker 1: good it wasn't, but because Wade had spent forty five
Speaker 1: minutes in the July heat working with me on it,
Speaker 1: adjusting my grip, correcting my wrist angle, never once raising
Speaker 1: his voice or losing patience, and Dad realized that his
Speaker 1: oldest son had a capacity for gentleness that the rest
Speaker 1: of the world would probably never see. But every once
Speaker 1: in a while, Wade came along on the cabin trips,
Speaker 1: and those are the trips I remember best. Wade is
Speaker 1: one of those guys who's good at everything without appearing
Speaker 1: to try. He could throw a football fifty yards in
Speaker 1: a perfect spiral. He could fix a carburetor by ear.
Speaker 1: He could walk into a room full of strangers and
Speaker 1: have three new friends by the time he left. Growing
Speaker 1: up in his shadow was both a gift and a curse.
Speaker 1: Gift because he taught me things practical things like how
Speaker 1: to use a level, how to sharpen a knife on
Speaker 1: a stone, how to read a topographic map, curse, because
Speaker 1: no matter what I did, he'd already done it better
Speaker 1: and done it first first. But in the woods, none
Speaker 1: of that mattered. In the woods, Wade and I were
Speaker 1: just two brothers doing what brothers have always done in
Speaker 1: the mountains, walking, exploring, getting into places we probably shouldn't
Speaker 1: have been. He taught me how to track deer by
Speaker 1: reading the ground, how to identify a tree by its
Speaker 1: bark and not just its leaves, how to orient yourself
Speaker 1: using the slope of the terrain when you couldn't see
Speaker 1: the sun.
Speaker 2: He'd been a boy scout.
Speaker 1: Which I never was, and he carried that practical wilderness
Speaker 1: knowledge the way some people carry a college degree, casually, confidently,
Speaker 1: like it was just part of who he was. There
Speaker 1: was one trip in particular that I've never forgotten. I
Speaker 1: was maybe ten, which would have made Wade sixteen. Dad
Speaker 1: had rented a cabin near Blowing Rock for a long
Speaker 1: Columbus Day weekend, and for once Wade had come along
Speaker 1: without protest. On the second morning, he and I hiked
Speaker 1: up a trail behind the cabin that climbed into a
Speaker 1: stand of old growth hemlocksocks. The trees were enormous, cathedral sized,
Speaker 1: the trunks were whiter than my armspan, and the canopy
Speaker 1: was so dense overhead that the forest floor was nearly bare,
Speaker 1: just brown needles and silence. We'd been walking for maybe
Speaker 1: forty five minutes when Wade stopped and pointed up the
Speaker 1: slope about one hundred yards above us. Wedged between two boulders,
Speaker 1: there was a small waterfall I hadn't noticed, maybe six
Speaker 1: feet tall. The water fell into a pool the size
Speaker 1: of a bathtub, clear as glass, and the mist rising
Speaker 1: off it caught the morning light in a way that
Speaker 1: made it glow.
Speaker 2: Wade said, let's check it out.
Speaker 1: And we scrambled up the slope and spent the next
Speaker 1: hour at that pool, tossing pebbles into the water and
Speaker 1: watching crayfish dart between the rocks. He told me about
Speaker 1: a girl named Sarah who he'd taken to homecoming the
Speaker 1: week before. He told me he was thinking about joining
Speaker 1: the Marines after graduation. He told me he was scared
Speaker 1: of turning into dad, working a job he hated until
Speaker 1: his body broke down. I didn't understand most of what
Speaker 1: he was saying at the time I was ten, but
Speaker 1: I understood that he was talking to me the way
Speaker 1: he'd talked to an equal, and that felt enormous. On
Speaker 1: the hike back down, he put his hand on my
Speaker 1: shoulder and said, you're all right, Garrett. Don't let anybody
Speaker 1: tell you different. I've carried that sentence my whole life.
Speaker 1: It's the thing I hear in my head when nothing
Speaker 1: else is working. Wade's voice, sixteen years old, still half
Speaker 1: boy and half man, saying my name with a weight
Speaker 1: that told me he meant it. And that's exactly why
Speaker 1: what happened on the mountain in October of twenty fifteen
Speaker 1: nearly destroyed me. Wade did join the Marines. He did
Speaker 1: two tours, came home and settled in Winston Salem, where
Speaker 1: he married a woman named Colleen and got into commercial HVAC.
Speaker 1: Not the same outfit as Cliff, different company, different territory.
Speaker 1: Wade and Colleen have two kids, Owen and Maggie, and
Speaker 1: they're good people, living good life lives. Wade and I
Speaker 1: don't see each other as often as we should. He's busy,
Speaker 1: I'm busy. We talk on the phone every couple weeks
Speaker 1: and get together for holidays when we can. The bond
Speaker 1: is still there. It just operates at a lower frequency now,
Speaker 1: the way it does with siblings once everybody's grown and scattered.
Speaker 1: Wade had visited the cabin twice since I'd bought it,
Speaker 1: once in the summer of twenty fourteen, when he drove
Speaker 1: down for a weekend to help me with the porch repair,
Speaker 1: and once in the spring of fifteen when he brought
Speaker 1: the kids up for an Easter visit. Neither time did
Speaker 1: anything unusual happen. The knocking had been quiet during Wade's
Speaker 1: summer visit, and by Easter. I hadn't yet planted the
Speaker 1: garden that would change everything. So as far as Wade knew,
Speaker 1: I was just a guy living on a mountain with
Speaker 1: a dog and a nice view. I hadn't told him
Speaker 1: about any of it. Not the knocking, not the tracks,
Speaker 1: not the meadow siding, not the garden raids, not the
Speaker 1: cabin visit. The only person who knew was Cliff, and
Speaker 1: even Cliff didn't know all of it.
Speaker 2: I kept Wade out.
Speaker 1: Of it because I knew how he'd react. Wade is
Speaker 1: a practical man, a marine, a mechanic at heart, even
Speaker 1: if he manages a crew now. He deals in things
Speaker 1: he can see, measure and fix. Telling him that something
Speaker 1: seven feet tall was harvesting my tomatoes in the dark
Speaker 1: would have gone one of two ways. Either he'd think
Speaker 1: I was losing it, or he'd drive down with a
Speaker 1: rifle and try to solve the problem the way he
Speaker 1: solves every problem directly. And I didn't want either of
Speaker 1: those outcomes. So when I tell you that I heard
Speaker 1: Wade's voice in the woods that October afternoon, I need
Speaker 1: you to understand the full weight of what that means.
Speaker 1: It wasn't just a familiar sound. It was the most
Speaker 1: familiar sound in my life. The voice that said my
Speaker 1: name at the waterfall when I was ten, the voice
Speaker 1: that called me all right when nobody else was saying it,
Speaker 1: the voice I would have followed anywhere, and something on
Speaker 1: that mountain knew it. The encounter happened on October eleventh,
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen, a Saturday. I remember the date because I'd
Speaker 1: taken the day off from a bathroom remodel in Hendersonville,
Speaker 1: specifically to walk the back acreage and check the property boundaries.
Speaker 1: I tried to walk the full perimeter at least twice
Speaker 1: a year, once in the spring after snow melt, and
Speaker 1: once in the fall after the leaves came down, to
Speaker 1: check for downed trees, boundary encroachments, and general condition of
Speaker 1: the land. It was also my way of maintaining a
Speaker 1: connection to the parts of the property I didn't use daily.
Speaker 1: The cabin, the meadow, the workshop, and the first hundred
Speaker 1: yards of the slope behind the house were my regular territory,
Speaker 1: but forty seven acres is a lot of ground, and
Speaker 1: most of it was forest. I only visited a few
Speaker 1: times a year. I should mention that this was about
Speaker 1: six weeks after the garden incidents had ended. I'd pulled
Speaker 1: the last of the crops in early September, ripped out
Speaker 1: the tomato cages and the bean steaks, and turned the
Speaker 1: plot back over with a shovel.
Speaker 2: I left the soil exposed.
Speaker 1: Didn't replant anything, didn't cover it, just let the mountain
Speaker 1: take it back. The creature hadn't come to the cabin
Speaker 1: wall again after that mid August night. The knocking had
Speaker 1: gone sporadic, the way it had the previous fall, appearing
Speaker 1: maybe once or twice a week, with no discernible pattern.
Speaker 1: In some ways, things felt like they dialed back to
Speaker 1: the first summer's level of activity. Distant, observable, manageable. But
Speaker 1: I'd be lying if I said I'd gotten comfortable. Comfortable
Speaker 1: isn't a word that applies to your life when you
Speaker 1: know something is in the trees above your house every night.
Speaker 2: What I'd gotten was.
Speaker 1: Accustomed, the way you get accustomed to living near a
Speaker 1: railroad track. The trains are still loud, you just stopped flinching.
Speaker 1: The morning was cool and bright, frost on the meadow
Speaker 1: when I woke up, a thin white film that crunched
Speaker 1: under Bowie's paws when he went out for his morning routine.
Speaker 1: It burned off by nine, and the mountain emerged into
Speaker 1: one of those autumn days that feel like a gift
Speaker 1: you didn't earn. The sky was deep blue, not a
Speaker 1: cloud in it, and the air had that october clarity
Speaker 1: that makes distant ridges look sharp enough to cut your eyes.
Speaker 1: The hardwoods on the ridge had peaked about a week
Speaker 1: earlier and were starting to shed. The oaks were rust
Speaker 1: and copper, The hickoryes had gone gold. The maples along
Speaker 1: Bishop Creek were deep crimson, almost purple, and the whole
Speaker 1: mountain looked like it was on fire in slow motion.
Speaker 1: It was the kind of October day that reminds you
Speaker 1: why people drive hundreds of miles to see the blue
Speaker 1: ridge in autumn. I ate breakfast, scrambled eggs and toast,
Speaker 1: and coffee strong enough to stand a spoon in, and filled.
Speaker 2: A water bottle.
Speaker 1: I told Bowie we were going for a long walk,
Speaker 1: which produced the usual explosion of tail wagging and spinning
Speaker 1: that he did whenever the word walk entered any sentence,
Speaker 1: even accidentally. I'd once said the phrase I need to
Speaker 1: walk that lumber over to the truck, and he'd lost
Speaker 1: his mind for ten minutes. The dog was a linguist
Speaker 1: when it came to the vocabulary of outdoor adventure. I
Speaker 1: clipped a leash to his collar, not because he needed it,
Speaker 1: he was voice trained and reliable, but because I liked
Speaker 1: having the option in case we ran into anything unexpected.
Speaker 1: I packed a small day pack with the water, a
Speaker 1: granola bar, a compass, my phone, though cell reception on
Speaker 1: the back acreage was essentially non existent, and a folding
Speaker 1: knife not for protection. I'm not naive enough to think
Speaker 1: a three inch blade would help me against anything that
Speaker 1: left seventeen inch tracks. The knife was for clearing brush
Speaker 1: and cutting flagging tape. Practical mundane, the kind of gear
Speaker 1: you carry when you're pretending everything about your life is normal.
Speaker 1: We headed out around nine point thirty. The plan was
Speaker 1: to walk the north boundary first, follow it east along
Speaker 1: the ridge, drop down to the southeast corner near a
Speaker 1: creek drainage, then loop back along the southern boundary, and
Speaker 1: come up through the meadow to the cabin.
Speaker 2: The whole circuit was.
Speaker 1: About three and a half miles, give or take, and
Speaker 1: usually took me two and a half to three hours,
Speaker 1: depending on how much bushwhacking was involved. Stay tuned for
Speaker 1: more Backwoods Bigfoot stories. We'll be back after these messages.
Speaker 1: The first leg went fine. The north boundary followed the
Speaker 1: ridge line marked with my orange flagging tape and at
Speaker 1: wider intervals with old blazes on trees that Earl had
Speaker 1: cut decades ago. The blazes were faded but still visible
Speaker 1: hatchet marks in the bark that had scabbed over with
Speaker 1: gray scar tissue.
Speaker 2: I checked each.
Speaker 1: One as I passed, still there, still holding The forest
Speaker 1: along the ridge was mostly open, mature hardwood with minimal underbrush,
Speaker 1: and Bowie trotted ahead of me on the trail with
Speaker 1: his nose working and his ears rotating like satellite dishes.
Speaker 1: He was happy, relaxed, no tension in his body, no
Speaker 1: hesitation at the tree line, which he'd begun crossing again
Speaker 1: on these longer hikes, even though he still refused to
Speaker 1: do it during his daily morning loop. I think the
Speaker 1: difference was me. When I was with him, he'd go anywhere.
Speaker 1: When he was alone, he had his own rules. We
Speaker 1: hit the northeast corner of the property around ten point fifteen.
Speaker 1: From there, the boundary dropped steeply down a wooded ravine
Speaker 1: into a drainage that fed into a tributary of Bishop Creek.
Speaker 1: This was the wildest part of the property. The slope
Speaker 1: was choked with rhododendron and mountain laurel, and the ground
Speaker 1: was slick with leaf litter over exposed rock. I had
Speaker 1: to use my hands in a couple spots, grabbing roots
Speaker 1: and saplings to lower myself down. Bowie navigated it better
Speaker 1: than I did, As dogs always do on steep ground.
Speaker 1: He'd plant his back feet and slide on his haunches
Speaker 1: for the steepest sections, then wait at the bottom and
Speaker 1: look up at me with an expression that suggested I
Speaker 1: was making this harder than it needed to be. At
Speaker 1: the bottom of the ravine, there was a flat bench
Speaker 1: of ground along the creek where the drainage opened up,
Speaker 1: maybe half an acre of relatively level terrain, thickly canopied
Speaker 1: with a carpet of moss on the rocks and fallen
Speaker 1: logs that gave the whole area a soft, padded quality.
Speaker 1: Sound was different down there. The canopy and the terrain
Speaker 1: walls created a natural amphitheater that muffled some sounds and
Speaker 1: amplified others. The creek was loud, gurgling over a series
Speaker 1: of small ledges, and its noise filled the air in
Speaker 1: a way that made it hard to hear much else.
Speaker 1: I stopped on the bench to drink some water and
Speaker 1: give Bowie a break. He flopped onto a moss covered
Speaker 1: log and panted happily. I stood there, looking up at
Speaker 1: the canopy, at the way the sunlight filtered through the
Speaker 1: remaining leaves and through shifting patterns on the forest floor.
Speaker 1: It was beautiful, peaceful, the kind of spot that makes
Speaker 1: you forget there's anything to worry about anywhere in the world.
Speaker 1: We'd been stopped for maybe five minutes when I heard it, Garrett,
Speaker 1: my name spoken clearly in Wade's voice. I need to
Speaker 1: try to explain what this was like, because I don't
Speaker 1: think words do it justice, but I'm going to try anyway.
Speaker 1: Imagine you're standing alone in a forest, miles from the
Speaker 1: nearest road, and you hear a voice you known your
Speaker 1: entire life, not a voice that sounds kind of like
Speaker 1: someone you know, the exact voice, every quality that makes
Speaker 1: it unique, the pitch, the resonance, the way certain consonants land,
Speaker 1: the way certain vowels stretch, all of it present and
Speaker 1: accounted for. Your body responds before your brain does. Your
Speaker 1: heart lifts, your shoulders relax. For one fraction of a second,
Speaker 1: you feel relief because someone you love is nearby and
Speaker 1: everything is going to be fine, and then your brain
Speaker 1: catches up.
Speaker 2: I froze.
Speaker 1: My hand tightened on the water bottle so hard the
Speaker 1: plastic crinkled. Bowie's head came up off the log, and
Speaker 1: he oriented toward the sound, which had come from upslope
Speaker 1: to the north, back the way we'd come, but offset
Speaker 1: to the west, maybe eighty yards away, maybe one hundred.
Speaker 1: It's hard to judge in a ravine because of the
Speaker 1: way sound bounces off the terrain walls and the evergreen
Speaker 1: thickets absorb and redirect it. I didn't move, I didn't breathe.
Speaker 1: I just listened nothing. The creek, a crow somewhere above
Speaker 1: the canopy, the faint rustle of dry leaves peeling off
Speaker 1: branches in the breeze, but no voice. The forest closed
Speaker 1: around the silence, like water filling a hole. My first
Speaker 1: thought was that I'd imagined it. Your brain does that sometimes,
Speaker 1: especially in natural environments with ambient noise. Running water, wind,
Speaker 1: and bird song can combine in ways that trick the
Speaker 1: auditory cortex into hearing patterns that aren't there. I'd read
Speaker 1: about it. It's called auditory paradolia, the same phenomenon that
Speaker 1: makes you see faces in rock formations. I told myself
Speaker 1: that's what happened. My brain, tuned to familiar sounds the
Speaker 1: way all brains are, had plucked Wade's voice out of
Speaker 1: the white noise of the creek and the forest and
Speaker 1: presented it to me as real. Except Bowie had heard
Speaker 1: it too. He was standing now off the log, weight
Speaker 1: forward on his front legs ears locked on the upslope direction.
Speaker 1: His nose was working fast pulling air in rapid bursts.
Speaker 1: He wasn't growling, he wasn't barking, but his whole posture
Speaker 1: had shifted from relaxed dog on a walk to alert
Speaker 1: animal processing a stimulus. Whatever he'd heard, it had engaged
Speaker 1: his attention in a way that random forest noise wouldn't.
Speaker 1: I called his name softly. He glanced at me and
Speaker 1: then looked back up slope. I could see the calculation
Speaker 1: happening behind his eyes. Go investigate, Stay with me. The
Speaker 1: leash hung loose between us. I gathered it up and
Speaker 1: shortened the slack About thirty seconds past. I'd almost convinced
Speaker 1: myself it was nothing, just a trick of the terrain
Speaker 1: and the water noise and my own over stimulated brain.
Speaker 1: Then it came again, Garrett, clear as a phone call.
Speaker 1: Wade's voice, the exact cadence, the exact pitch, the exact
Speaker 1: way he says my name, with the emphasis on the
Speaker 1: first syllable and a slight drop on the second, not
Speaker 1: a yell, not a shout, conversational, the way he'd say
Speaker 1: it if he was standing twenty feet away and wanted
Speaker 1: to get my attention.
Speaker 2: This time, I.
Speaker 1: Could place the direction more precisely. It was coming from
Speaker 1: the northwest up the slope, in an area of dense
Speaker 1: rhododendron about seventy or eighty yards above me and to
Speaker 1: the left, an area I'd just walked through twenty minutes earlier.
Speaker 1: On my way down. My heart rate climbed. Not because
Speaker 1: I was scared, not yet, but because the rational part
Speaker 1: of my brain was running through possibilities and coming up empty.
Speaker 1: Wade was in Winston Salem, two and a half hours away.
Speaker 1: He wasn't on the property. He hadn't called to say
Speaker 1: he was coming. There were no other cars at the
Speaker 1: cabin when I'd left. And even if by some miracle
Speaker 1: he'd driven down unannounced and hiked onto the property to
Speaker 1: find me, he wouldn't know which direction I'd gone. He
Speaker 1: wouldn't be standing in the middle of a rhododendron thicket
Speaker 1: on a steep ravine wall, calling my name at conversational volume.
Speaker 1: I cupped my hands around my mouth and called out Wade.
Speaker 1: My voice sounded thin and small against the noise of
Speaker 1: the creek and the immensity of the forest around me.
Speaker 1: It died in the canopy above and left nothing behind.
Speaker 1: Silence for about ten seconds, then from the same direction,
Speaker 1: Garrett over here, three words perfectly articulated in a voice
Speaker 1: that was in every measurable quality I could assess my brothers.
Speaker 1: The tambre, the resonance, the slight gravel that Wade's voice
Speaker 1: picked up after two tours in desert climate and a
Speaker 1: pacadat habit he'd kicked in his late twenties, but that
Speaker 1: left a permanent texture in.
Speaker 2: His lower register. Every detail was right.
Speaker 1: If I'd been blindfolded and someone had played me a
Speaker 1: recording of those three words, I would have identified the
Speaker 1: speaker as Wade without hesitation. But I wasn't blindfolded. I
Speaker 1: was standing in a ravine at the bottom of my property,
Speaker 1: and whatever was producing the voice was hidden in a
Speaker 1: thicket of evergreen brush on a hillside. I just descended,
Speaker 1: and a feeling was building in my stomach that I
Speaker 1: recognized from the night I'd seen the figure at the
Speaker 1: meadow's edge, that low primal alarm that has nothing to
Speaker 1: do with logic and everything to do with millions of
Speaker 1: years of evolutionary programming telling you that something is wrong.
Speaker 1: Bowie confirmed it. His hackles were up the ridge of
Speaker 1: hair along his spine from his shoulder blades to the
Speaker 1: base of his tail, was standing in a stiff line.
Speaker 1: His ears were pinned flat against his head, which was
Speaker 1: different from the forward alert position he'd held a moment earlier.
Speaker 1: Forward ears mean interest. Pinned ears mean fear or aggression
Speaker 1: or both. He pressed against my left leg and looked
Speaker 1: up at me, and the expression on his face, if
Speaker 1: I'm being honest, is what kept me from walking toward
Speaker 1: the voice, because Bowie's face said no, not in words, obviously,
Speaker 1: but in the way his eyes went wide, and his
Speaker 1: body compressed itself against mine, and his tail tucked between
Speaker 1: his legs in a motion so sudden it was like
Speaker 1: someone had pulled a cord. Every other time I'd heard
Speaker 1: something unusual on this property, Bowie had been watchful, cautious, tense,
Speaker 1: but not afraid.
Speaker 2: Not like this.
Speaker 1: This was the first time I'd seen genuine terror in
Speaker 1: my dog, and it hit me harder than any sound
Speaker 1: from the woods ever could. I stood still and made
Speaker 1: a decision. I wasn't going to walk toward the voice.
Speaker 1: I was going to continue the boundary, walk in the
Speaker 1: direction I'd been heading south and west, and get back
Speaker 1: to the cabin by the planned route. The ravine wasn't
Speaker 1: a place I wanted to stay. The terrain was steep,
Speaker 1: the visibility was poor, and I was in a natural
Speaker 1: bowl that would be difficult to get out of quickly
Speaker 1: if I needed to. I turned south and started walking.
Speaker 1: That's when the thing that changed everything happened. I turned
Speaker 1: south and started walking along the creek bench, stepping over
Speaker 1: exposed roots and moss covered stones, keeping a steady pace,
Speaker 1: but not running. Running felt wrong. Running felt like prey behavior.
Speaker 1: Some deep, instinctual part of me understood that running in
Speaker 1: the presence of something predatory could trigger a pursuit response,
Speaker 1: and even though I didn't know what I was dealing with,
Speaker 1: I knew enough about predators to know that much. So
Speaker 1: I walked purposefully, shoulders square, eyes forward, projecting a confidence
Speaker 1: I absolutely did not feel. Bowie was at my left hip,
Speaker 1: matching my pace. His body pressed against my legs so
Speaker 1: tightly I could feel his rib cage expand and contract
Speaker 1: with each breath. His tail was tucked, his ears were
Speaker 1: still pinned, but he was moving. He was with me,
Speaker 1: and that was enough. About forty five seconds into my walk,
Speaker 1: maybe fifty yards south of where I'd been standing, the
Speaker 1: voice came again, but this time it came from in
Speaker 1: front of me, Garrett, same voice, same pitch, same Wade,
Speaker 1: but from the south, from the direction I was walking toward,
Speaker 1: maybe sixty yards ahead, somewhere in the dense laurel that
Speaker 1: choked the lower end of the drainage, where the bench
Speaker 1: narrowed and the ravine walls closed in. I stopped so
Speaker 1: fast I nearly tripped over a route. Bowie stopped beside me, rigid.
Speaker 1: His head swiveled toward the southern voice, and then back
Speaker 1: toward the north, and then back south again, and the
Speaker 1: confusion in his movement, the rapid oscillation between two threats,
Speaker 1: reflected exactly what was happening inside my own head. Then,
Speaker 1: immediately within two seconds of the southern call, another voice
Speaker 1: over here from the northwest, from behind me, from the
Speaker 1: same direction as before, same spot, same distance, same words,
Speaker 1: Wade's voice saying the same phrase it had said earlier,
Speaker 1: But now the context was entirely different, because now I
Speaker 1: wasn't being called toward something. I was being boxed in
Speaker 1: my name from the south. Wealth over here from the north.
Speaker 1: Two calls, two directions separated by less than two seconds,
Speaker 1: close enough together that the second one overlapped the fading
Speaker 1: echo of the first, close enough that the acoustic signatures
Speaker 1: of the two calls blended in the air of the
Speaker 1: ravine for one brief, disorienting moment, and my brother's voice
Speaker 1: was everywhere and nowhere at the same time. I'm going
Speaker 1: to be very direct about what I was feeling at
Speaker 1: that moment, because I think honesty matters more than bravery
Speaker 1: when you're telling a story like this. I was terrified.
Speaker 1: Not the gradual, creeping unease I'd felt during the garden
Speaker 1: raids or the night at the cabin wall. This was acute, immediate,
Speaker 1: the kind of terrified that roots you to the ground
Speaker 1: and makes your vision narrow to a tunnel, the kind
Speaker 1: that strips away every layer of adult composure and drops
Speaker 1: you straight into the fear response of a child who's
Speaker 1: heard something under the bed. My breathing went shallow, my
Speaker 1: legs felt like they were filled with sand. My hands
Speaker 1: were shaking so badly that the leash was vibrating between
Speaker 1: my fingers. I could feel my pulse in my teeth
Speaker 1: because I understood what had just happened. Whatever was doing this,
Speaker 1: whatever was producing a perfect replica of my brother's voice.
Speaker 1: There were two of them or one of them had
Speaker 1: moved impossibly fast, covering one hundred and twenty yards of
Speaker 1: steep laurel choked terrain in under two seconds, which was
Speaker 1: not physically possible for anything that walked on legs.
Speaker 2: Either way, I.
Speaker 1: Was between them in a ravine at the bottom of
Speaker 1: a slope. I couldn't climb quickly with limited visibility in
Speaker 1: every direction, and whatever had been calling my name from
Speaker 1: one direction was now calling it from two, and the
Speaker 1: new position was blocking my escape route south. I've replayed
Speaker 1: this moment a thousand times in the shower, driving to work,
Speaker 1: lying in bed at three in the morning, and the
Speaker 1: conclusion I keep arriving at is that the southern call
Speaker 1: was deliberate positioning. The first set of calls from the
Speaker 1: north had failed to bring me closer. I'd refuse to follow,
Speaker 1: so the strategy changed. A second voice appeared on the
Speaker 1: route I was using to escape. The message wasn't come
Speaker 1: here anymore. The message was you can't leave. Whether that
Speaker 1: message was a bluff or a genuine threat, I'll never
Speaker 1: know because I didn't test it. I didn't walk south,
Speaker 1: I didn't walk north. I did the only thing that
Speaker 1: made tactical sense. The tactical part of my brain, the
Speaker 1: part that still functioned despite the fear, assessed my options
Speaker 1: in about five seconds. I couldn't go north. That's where
Speaker 1: the voice had been coming from since the start. I
Speaker 1: couldn't go south. It was there now too. Going east
Speaker 1: would take me deeper into the ravine, further from the cabin,
Speaker 1: and into terrain I didn't know as well. West meant
Speaker 1: climbing the ravine wall on the opposite side from both
Speaker 1: voice locations, gaining elevation, and working my way through the
Speaker 1: forest back toward the meadow. Stay tuned for more Backwoods
Speaker 1: Bigfoot story. We'll be back after these messages. I went west.
Speaker 1: The decision was instinctive, but not impulsive. West meant climbing,
Speaker 1: which meant effort, which meant slower movement. But West also
Speaker 1: meant putting the ravine below me and gaining the high ground.
Speaker 1: In the Marines, Wade used to say that the high
Speaker 1: ground is the only ground. He said it so often
Speaker 1: it became a family joke. Mom would ask who wanted
Speaker 1: the last piece of pie, and Wade would say, high ground, Mom,
Speaker 1: I'm taking it. But he was right, and the principle
Speaker 1: applied here. If I could get above whatever was in
Speaker 1: the ravine, I could see further, move faster, and navigate
Speaker 1: by landmark instead of trying to orient myself at the
Speaker 1: bottom of a drainage where every direction looked the same.
Speaker 1: The climb was brutal. The ravine wall on the west
Speaker 1: side was even steeper than the one I descended on
Speaker 1: the north, maybe a forty five degree angle in places,
Speaker 1: and it was thick with laurel that grabbed at my
Speaker 1: legs and pack straps and slow lapped my face with
Speaker 1: every step. The laurel along these ravine walls grows in
Speaker 1: interlocking tangles, branches weaving through branches, and you can't walk
Speaker 1: through it so much as wrestle through it. I was
Speaker 1: hauling myself upward by grabbing branches and roots, digging my
Speaker 1: boot toes into the leaf litter to find purchase on
Speaker 1: the rock underneath. Twice my foot slipped and I slid
Speaker 1: back three or four feet before catching myself on a
Speaker 1: laurel trunk. My jeans were torn at the left knee,
Speaker 1: my palms were scraped. Raw Bowie scrambled beside me, loaded
Speaker 1: the ground, moving fast, not waiting for me like he
Speaker 1: usually did, but driving upward with an urgency that mirrored mine,
Speaker 1: his body language had changed from terrified to determined.
Speaker 2: He wanted out of that ravine.
Speaker 1: As badly as I did. Every few seconds, he'd glanced
Speaker 1: back at me, not to check on me, but to
Speaker 1: make sure I was still coming, still moving, still heading up.
Speaker 1: I was maybe thirty yards up the slope, about halfway
Speaker 1: to what I judged was the ridge line above when
Speaker 1: the voice came again. This time it was different, Garrett,
Speaker 1: come on from below from the bench I'd just left,
Speaker 1: and the tone had shifted. The first calls had been neutral, conversational,
Speaker 1: like Wade casually trying to get my attention across a
Speaker 1: parking lot or a backyard. This one had emphasis, insistence,
Speaker 1: a quality that felt less like a greeting and more
Speaker 1: like a command. Come on, two words that in Wade's
Speaker 1: actual voice usually mean hurry up or stop messing around
Speaker 1: the way he'd say it when we were kids and
Speaker 1: I was lagging behind on a trail, The way he'd
Speaker 1: say it if he was standing twenty feet away and
Speaker 1: watching me walk in the wrong direction and couldn't understand
Speaker 1: why I wasn't coming toward him. The emotional precision of
Speaker 1: it almost broke my resolve, because come on, in Wade's
Speaker 1: voice is a sound that's wired directly into my childhood.
Speaker 1: It bypasses every filter I have. It speaks to the
Speaker 1: ten year old who followed his big brother up every trail,
Speaker 1: across every creek, into every adventure without question. And for
Speaker 1: one terrible moment, standing on that slope with my hands
Speaker 1: bloody and my lungs burning, a part of me wanted
Speaker 1: to turn around and go back down, wanted to believe
Speaker 1: it was really weighed, wanted the comfort of that voice
Speaker 1: being real. I didn't stop. I kept climbing. My hands
Speaker 1: were bleeding from grabbing sharp rock edges, My breathing was ragged,
Speaker 1: Sweat was running down my back despite the October chill.
Speaker 1: Bowie was six feet above me, scrambling his nails, scraping
Speaker 1: on stone. Garrett closer below and to my right, closer
Speaker 1: than it had been moving. Whatever was making that sound
Speaker 1: was moving toward me up the slope, following, not crashing
Speaker 1: through brush the way a person would, not panting or
Speaker 1: grunting from the exertion of a steep climb, just a voice, disembodied,
Speaker 1: floating up through the laurel canopy like it was attached
Speaker 1: to nothing like it existed independently of any body, A
Speaker 1: sound without a source. Getting nearer, I couldn't see anything when.
Speaker 2: I looked back. The laurel was too thick, the.
Speaker 1: Canopy overhead blocked most of the sunlight, and the understory
Speaker 1: was a maze of twisted branches and waxy leaves that
Speaker 1: could have hidden a school bus at thirty feet. But
Speaker 1: I could feel it, the same feeling from the night
Speaker 1: at the meadow, the same feeling from the kitchen window,
Speaker 1: that compression of the air, that tightening in the chest,
Speaker 1: that primitive knowledge that something large and focused was nearby
Speaker 1: and watching. I made the top of the ravine wall
Speaker 1: in what felt like an eternity but was probably four
Speaker 1: or five minutes of hard climbing. When I crested the
Speaker 1: ridge and hit flat ground, I stopped, bent over, hands
Speaker 1: on my knees, gasping. Bowie pressed against me, panting. I
Speaker 1: could feel his ribs heaving against my calf. I looked
Speaker 1: back down into the ravine. From up here I could
Speaker 1: see the canopy of the drainage below, a continuous mat
Speaker 1: of green, where the rhododendron and Laurel held their leaves
Speaker 1: year round. The creek was invisible under the foliage. The
Speaker 1: bench where I'd been standing was invisible. Everything was hidden.
Speaker 1: The forest had closed over it like it had never
Speaker 1: been there. Nothing followed us to the top. No sound,
Speaker 1: no voice, no movement in the brush below. Whatever had
Speaker 1: been calling my name had stayed in the ravine. But
Speaker 1: I was disoriented. I need to explain this because it's
Speaker 1: the part that scares me more than the voice itself,
Speaker 1: and it's the part I think about every time I
Speaker 1: go into the woods. To this day, I didn't know
Speaker 1: where I was. I've been hiking since I could walk.
Speaker 1: I've navigated back country in six states. I've never in
Speaker 1: my entire life been lost on a piece of land
Speaker 1: I owned. But standing on top of that ravine wall,
Speaker 1: looking around at the forest in every direction, I couldn't
Speaker 1: figure out which way was home. The compass was in
Speaker 1: my pack, I pulled it out and checked it. West
Speaker 1: was behind me. East was the ravine i'd just climbed
Speaker 1: out of. North and south were forests that looked identical
Speaker 1: in every direction, mature hardwood, brown leaf litter, occasional outcrops
Speaker 1: of gray granite, no landmarks I recognized, no flagging tape,
Speaker 1: no old blazes on the trees. This didn't make sense.
Speaker 1: I was on my own property, forty seven acres. I'd
Speaker 1: walked it dozens of times. I knew the terrain the way,
Speaker 1: I knew the layout of the cabin. But nothing looked familiar.
Speaker 1: The trees, the slope, the angle of the light. None
Speaker 1: of it aligned with my mental map. It was as
Speaker 1: if the Ravine climb had deposited me on an entirely
Speaker 1: different mountain. I checked the compass again. The needle was steady.
Speaker 1: West was west, but the terrain didn't match what I
Speaker 1: expected to find. On the western side of my property,
Speaker 1: the slope should have been dropping toward the meadow. Instead
Speaker 1: it was climbing gradually, but unmistakably. The ground was rising
Speaker 1: in a direction it shouldn't have been. I started walking west,
Speaker 1: trusting the compass over my instincts. Bowie stayed close within
Speaker 1: arm's reach, which was unlike him on a hike. Usually
Speaker 1: he ranged ahead. Now he was pressed to my hip
Speaker 1: like a shadow. After about ten minutes of walking, I
Speaker 1: still hadn't found anything familiar. No flagging tape, no old
Speaker 1: boundary blazes, no view of the meadow or the cabin
Speaker 1: or the workshop. Just more forest, more identical hardwood, more silence.
Speaker 1: And the silence was wrong. I hadn't noticed it during
Speaker 1: the climb because I'd been too focused on getting out
Speaker 1: of the ravine. But now standing still on the ridgetop,
Speaker 1: I realized the forest was quiet, not the normal quiet
Speaker 1: of an autumn afternoon, the pressurized quiet, the kind I'd
Speaker 1: first encountered when I walked toward the knocking during my
Speaker 1: first summer. No bird song, no squirrel chatter, no insect noise.
Speaker 1: The only sound was my own breathing and the blood
Speaker 1: rushing in my ears, and the barely perceptible whisper of
Speaker 1: dry leaves shifting in a breeze. I couldn't feel. My
Speaker 1: orientation was gone, not my compass orientation. The compass still worked.
Speaker 1: My spatial orientation, the internal map that tells you where
Speaker 1: you are relative to places you know, the one that
Speaker 1: operates below conscious thought, built from thousands of repetitions of
Speaker 1: the same roots, the same views, the same landmarks. That
Speaker 1: map was blank, as if someone had wiped it clean
Speaker 1: and left me standing in a forest I'd never visited.
Speaker 1: I've since learned that this is a reported phenomenon associated
Speaker 1: with sasquatch encounters. Witnesses describe sudden, inexplicable disorientation on familiar ground,
Speaker 1: an inability to find their way on trails they've walked
Speaker 1: hundreds of times, a feeling of being turned around, redirected,
Speaker 1: lost in places where being lost should be impossible. Some
Speaker 1: researchers attribute it to infrasound, low frequency sound waves below
Speaker 1: the threshold of human hearing that can affect the vestibular
Speaker 1: system and disrupt spatial processing. Others think it simply the
Speaker 1: neurological effect of extreme fear on the hippocampus, which is
Speaker 1: the part of the brain responsible for spatial memory. I
Speaker 1: don't know which explanation is correct. I just know what
Speaker 1: I experienced. I was lost on my own land, and
Speaker 1: the feeling was unlike anything I've encountered before or since.
Speaker 1: It wasn't confusion, it was a rasure, like the part
Speaker 1: of my brain that knew where home was had been
Speaker 1: temporarily shut down. I stood there for several minutes, breathing,
Speaker 1: trying to get my bearings, trying to force my internal
Speaker 1: compass to reset. Bowie sat at my feet, looking up
Speaker 1: at me with an expression. I read as concern, not
Speaker 1: fear anymore, concern like he could tell I was struggling
Speaker 1: and didn't know how to help. Then I did something
Speaker 1: that in retrospect was either brilliant or lucky. I stopped
Speaker 1: trying to navigate and started trying to listen. The mountain
Speaker 1: has its own sounds, even when the birds are quiet
Speaker 1: and the insects are silent, The land itself makes noise. Water, wind,
Speaker 1: the creak of old trees adjusting their weight, and if
Speaker 1: you're within earshot of a creek, you can use it.
Speaker 1: Water always runs downhill. Downhill on my property meant the meadow.
Speaker 1: The meadow meant the cabin. I closed my eyes and listened.
Speaker 1: At first, all I could hear was my own heart
Speaker 1: beat and the blood noise in my ears. But gradually,
Speaker 1: underneath that I picked up something faint, a murmur, not
Speaker 1: a voice, water moving water, distant but detectable, coming from
Speaker 1: somewhere to my left, south southwest. I opened my eyes,
Speaker 1: checked the compass, south southwest, toward Bishop Creek. I walked
Speaker 1: toward the sound. Five minutes in, the terrain began to drop.
Speaker 1: The slope angle matched what I expected. On the western
Speaker 1: side of the property, trees I recognized started appearing. A
Speaker 1: massive red oak with a double trunk that I'd marked
Speaker 1: on my first boundary walk. A shelf of exposed granite
Speaker 1: with lichen patterns I'd photographed for no particular reason. Flagging
Speaker 1: tape orange faded exactly where I'd tied it two years earlier.
Speaker 1: The relief was physical. My shoulders dropped, my breathing normalized,
Speaker 1: the tunnel vision eased. I was back on my map.
Speaker 1: I was back in territory. I knew the cabin was
Speaker 1: below me, maybe a quarter mile through the trees and
Speaker 1: down the slope to the meadow. Bowie's tail came up.
Speaker 1: His pace quickened. He knew where we were too. We
Speaker 1: made it back to the cabin by twelve thirty. I'd
Speaker 1: been gone three hours, which was about normal for a
Speaker 1: boundary walk, except I'd only covered maybe two thirds of
Speaker 1: the route before the ravine encounter had cut the trips sharpe.
Speaker 1: The meadow had never.
Speaker 2: Looked so good.
Speaker 1: The open grass, the clear sky overhead, the familiar shape
Speaker 1: of the cabin with its green metal roof and stone chimney.
Speaker 1: All of it was exactly where it was supposed to be.
Speaker 1: The world made sense again. I unlocked the front door,
Speaker 1: went inside, and sat on the couch without taking off
Speaker 1: my boots or my pack. Bowie jumped up beside me,
Speaker 1: which he wasn't technically allowed to do, and I didn't
Speaker 1: say a word about it. He curled against my thigh
Speaker 1: and put his head on my lap, and we sat
Speaker 1: there in the dim quiet of the cabin while the
Speaker 1: morning's events replayed in my head on a loop I
Speaker 1: couldn't stop. My hands were still bleeding where I'd grabbed
Speaker 1: rock edges during the climb. I noticed this only because
Speaker 1: Bowie started licking the cuts on my left palm gently,
Speaker 1: the way he licked everything, like it was his job
Speaker 1: to fix what was broken.
Speaker 2: I let him.
Speaker 1: I sat there and let my dog nurse my wounds,
Speaker 1: and stared at the back wall of the cabin and
Speaker 1: tried to make sense of what it did, just happened.
Speaker 1: The thing that kept surfacing, the detail I couldn't push down,
Speaker 1: wasn't the fear, or the disorientation, or even the tactical
Speaker 1: implications of being called from multiple directions. It was the
Speaker 1: emotional manipulation. That's what it was. I can call it
Speaker 1: what it is now, ten years later. It was manipulation.
Speaker 1: Something had identified the voice most likely to make me
Speaker 1: drop my guard, the voice most likely to draw me
Speaker 1: toward it instead of a way, and it had deployed
Speaker 1: that voice with enough fidelity to fool me. Not for long,
Speaker 1: not completely, but for those first few seconds before my
Speaker 1: brain caught up to my gut, I'd believed it. I'd
Speaker 1: felt the relief. I'd wanted it to be real, And
Speaker 1: that wanting that half second of hope before the fear
Speaker 1: set in is the part that hurts the most, because
Speaker 1: it means the thing in the woods understood something about
Speaker 1: me that I barely understood about myself. It understood that
Speaker 1: I missed my brother, that the sound of Wade's voice
Speaker 1: calling my name was at its core the sound of safety,
Speaker 1: of home, of being ten years old at a waterfall
Speaker 1: with someone who said I was all right. Whatever was
Speaker 1: on that ridge had read me well enough to find
Speaker 1: that thread and pull it. I'm going to try to
Speaker 1: lay this out as clearly as I can, because I've
Speaker 1: had ten years to think about it, and I've never
Speaker 1: arrived at an explanation that satisfies the rational part of
Speaker 1: my brain. Something in the woods called my name in
Speaker 1: my brother's voice, not a rough approximation, not a vague similarity,
Speaker 1: an exact reproduction, the pitch, the timbre, the inflection, the
Speaker 1: subtle rasp, every acoustic fingerprint that makes Wade's voice. Wade's
Speaker 1: voice was present in what I heard, and it wasn't
Speaker 1: a single isolated call.
Speaker 2: It was repeated.
Speaker 1: Multiple times from multiple directions, with contextual phrasing over here,
Speaker 1: come on, stay tuned for more Backwoods Bigfoot store. We'll
Speaker 1: be back after these messages. Those aren't random vocalizations. Those
Speaker 1: are directives, instructions, language, or at least an imitation of language,
Speaker 1: deployed with apparent intent. And the intent appeared to be luring.
Speaker 1: I don't use that word casually, but I can't find
Speaker 1: a better one. The initial calls came from above me,
Speaker 1: from a direction that would have required me to climb
Speaker 1: back up the slope I just descended. If I'd followed them,
Speaker 1: I would have been moving uphill into dense cover, away
Speaker 1: from the creek, away from the cabin. The later call
Speaker 1: came from ahead of me, from the direction I was walking,
Speaker 1: which would have stopped my progress along the logical exit route,
Speaker 1: and the final calls came from below from behind, as
Speaker 1: if the thing had repositioned to follow me up the
Speaker 1: ravine wall. Every call directed me toward a position of disadvantage.
Speaker 1: Every call tried to get me to stop moving towards safety.
Speaker 1: If I'd responded the way most people would respond to
Speaker 1: hear hearing their brother's voice in the woods, if I'd
Speaker 1: walked toward it instead of a way, I would have
Speaker 1: ended up deeper in that ravine, further from the cabin,
Speaker 1: in terrain that was steep and tangled and hard to navigate.
Speaker 2: I don't know what would have happened then. I don't
Speaker 2: want to know.
Speaker 1: What I do know is that whatever produced that voice
Speaker 1: had been listening to me, not just that day, for months,
Speaker 1: maybe longer. It had heard me talk on the phone.
Speaker 1: It had heard me at some point talking to Wade,
Speaker 1: maybe during one of his visits, and it had cataloged
Speaker 1: his voice, stored it learned it well enough to fool me,
Speaker 1: at least initially, in the very environment where I should
Speaker 1: have been most skeptical. That implies a level of observation
Speaker 1: that goes beyond watching from the ridge. That implies proximity,
Speaker 1: over time, sustained, patient, close range surveillance of my life,
Speaker 1: my relationships, and my daily patterns. It knew Wade's voice,
Speaker 1: it knew my name. It deployed both together in a
Speaker 1: way that was calculated to provoke the strongest possible emotional response.
Speaker 1: I called Cliff that evening. I told him what happened.
Speaker 1: He listened without interrupting, which was unusual for Cliff. Normally,
Speaker 1: he jump in with a joke or a question, or
Speaker 1: some piece of unsolicited advice that was half helpful and
Speaker 1: half annoying. But this time he was silent through the
Speaker 1: whole thing. I could hear him breathing. On the other end,
Speaker 1: I could hear the television on low in his living room,
Speaker 1: some kind of game on, crowd noise in the background.
Speaker 1: But Cliff didn't say a word until I was finished.
Speaker 1: When I stopped talking, there was a long silence, long
Speaker 1: enough that I checked my phone to make sure the
Speaker 1: call hadn't dropped. That's new, he said finally. I told him, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you said it sounded exactly like Wade, exactly, not close,
Speaker 1: not similar, exactly. He let out a slow breath. Have
Speaker 1: you told Wade? I said no. I said, I didn't
Speaker 1: know how. I said, I couldn't figure out a way
Speaker 1: to tell my brother that something in the woods had
Speaker 1: used his voice to try to lure me into a
Speaker 1: ravine that didn't end with Wade either thinking I'd lost
Speaker 1: my mind or loading a deer rifle and driving south
Speaker 1: at ninety miles an hour. Neither of those outcomes would
Speaker 1: help anybody. Cliff was quiet for another few seconds. Then
Speaker 1: he said something that stuck with me. He said, whatever
Speaker 1: this thing is, Garrett, it's not just watching you.
Speaker 2: It knows you.
Speaker 1: There's a difference. He was right, there's a big difference.
Speaker 1: Watching is passive. It's surveillance. It's data collection. A deer
Speaker 1: camera watches, a satellite watches. Knowing is intimate. Knowing is
Speaker 1: what happens when the watching goes on long enough and
Speaker 1: gets close enough that the watcher begins to understand the watched,
Speaker 1: their habits, their relationships, their vulnerabilities, their soft spots, and
Speaker 1: whatever was on that ridge had crossed that line sometime
Speaker 1: between the first wood knock in June of twenty fourteen
Speaker 1: and the moment it spoke my name in my brother's
Speaker 1: voice in October of twenty fifteen. In sixteen months, it
Speaker 1: had gone from distant percussion to personal impersonation, from announcing
Speaker 1: its presence to demonstrating its knowledge of mine. I asked
Speaker 1: Cliff if he thought I should leave the property. He
Speaker 1: was quiet for a beat and then said, do you
Speaker 1: want to leave? I thought about it, honestly. I thought
Speaker 1: about the cabin earl's hands in every joint, and beam
Speaker 1: rebazinias pushing up through the soil without anyone planting them.
Speaker 1: The stone chimney Frank had built, the view of the
Speaker 1: ridge from the porch at sunset, the way the mountain
Speaker 1: breathed at night, the way Bowie slept deeper there than
Speaker 1: he'd ever slept anywhere else. Even now, even with the
Speaker 1: hallway posting and the flat ears and the stiff legged
Speaker 1: vigils at the tree line. I told Cliff no, I
Speaker 1: didn't want to leave. He said, then don't, but start
Speaker 1: carrying a radio when you hide, and stop going to
Speaker 1: the back acreage alone. That was good advice. I took
Speaker 1: half of it. I bought a handheld two way radio
Speaker 1: the following week, even though there was nobody in range
Speaker 1: to talk to. It made me feel better having it
Speaker 1: clipped to my pack. A connection to the human world,
Speaker 1: even a theoretical one. But I kept hiking alone. I
Speaker 1: couldn't explain why except that bringing someone else into those
Speaker 1: woods felt wrong, like introducing a stranger to a conversation
Speaker 1: that had been building between me and the mountain for
Speaker 1: a year and a half. I know that doesn't make
Speaker 1: logical sense. Not much about this does. I spent the
Speaker 1: rest of that evening on the porch, which I know
Speaker 1: sounds crazy given what had happened. But the porch felt safe.
Speaker 1: The meadow was open, the site lines were clear in
Speaker 1: every direction.
Speaker 2: I could see the.
Speaker 1: Tree line on all sides, and nothing could approach without
Speaker 1: crossing fifty or sixty yards of open grass first. And
Speaker 1: I needed to sit with what I'd experienced before I
Speaker 1: sealed it up in a compartment, and I had to
Speaker 1: pretend it hadn't happened, because I'd done that with the
Speaker 1: meadow siding and it hadn't worked. I'd done it with
Speaker 1: the garden raids, and it hadn't worked. Every time I
Speaker 1: tried to put a lid on what was happening, the
Speaker 1: lid got blown off by something new and stranger. The
Speaker 1: only approach that seemed honest was to sit with it,
Speaker 1: let it breathe, let the fear run its course, until
Speaker 1: what was left underneath was something I could actually examine.
Speaker 1: Bowie sat beside my chair, the way he did every evening,
Speaker 1: but closer than usual. His chin was on my boot
Speaker 1: and his eyes were half closed, that drowsy contentment that
Speaker 1: dogs slip into when they've decided the danger has passed
Speaker 1: for the day. I envied his ability to do that,
Speaker 1: to transition from rigid pin deer terror to peaceful dozing
Speaker 1: in the span of a few hours. Humans don't reset
Speaker 1: that cleanly. We carry the residue. It sits in our
Speaker 1: shoulders and our stomachs and our dreams, and it doesn't dissipate,
Speaker 1: It just settles around some un set The knocking came
Speaker 1: two strikes from the ridge, the first I'd heard in weeks,
Speaker 1: sharp and clean and distant, cutting through the still evening
Speaker 1: air with that familiar percussive authority. They came at seven
Speaker 1: forty eight, about twelve minutes after the sun dropped behind
Speaker 1: the ridge line, right in the window where they'd always appeared, consistent, punctual,
Speaker 1: as if nothing unusual had happened that day, And for
Speaker 1: the first time since they'd started, the sound didn't feel
Speaker 1: like a mystery. It felt like a conversation. I'd been
Speaker 1: dropped into the middle of without being told the language.
Speaker 1: The knocking wasn't random, it never had been. It was communication,
Speaker 1: and the mimicry, and the ravine, the use of Wade's voice,
Speaker 1: my name spoken from two directions. That was communication too,
Speaker 1: a different dialect of the same language, louder, more direct,
Speaker 1: more personal, and infinitely more disturbing. There was no vocalization
Speaker 1: that night, no voice, no mimicry, just the knocks, and
Speaker 1: then the long, deep quiet of the mountain settling into darkness.
Speaker 1: The stars came out, thick and silent above the meadow.
Speaker 1: A barred owl called from somewhere down near Bishop Creek,
Speaker 1: its eight note song drifting up through the hollow like
Speaker 1: a question. Nobody answered. The temperature dropped. I pulled my
Speaker 1: jacket tighter and stayed on the porch until my coffee
Speaker 1: was gone and my toes were numb. Before I went inside,
Speaker 1: I stood at the edge of the porch and looked
Speaker 1: at the tree line one more time. The darkness beyond
Speaker 1: the meadow was absolute. The forest was a solid wall
Speaker 1: of black, featureless and deep, and somewhere inside it something
Speaker 1: that knew my brother's voice was settling in for the night.
Speaker 1: I couldn't see it, but I could feel it, the
Speaker 1: way you feel someone watching you through a window, the
Speaker 1: way you know without looking that you're not alone in
Speaker 1: a room. I said, out loud to no one and
Speaker 1: to everything, I'm not leaving the mountain. Didn't answer, but
Speaker 1: I think it heard me. Bowie slept in the hallway again.
Speaker 2: That night.
Speaker 1: I slept on the couch, with every light in the
Speaker 1: cabin off, and the spiral notebook open on the coffee table,
Speaker 1: three fresh pages of notes drying in the dark. I
Speaker 1: don't think I slept more than ninety minutes. Every time
Speaker 1: i'd start to drift off, i'd hear Wade's voice in
Speaker 1: my head, saying my name, and I'd snap awake with
Speaker 1: my heart hammering. It wasn't the sound itself that kept
Speaker 1: me up. It was the precision of it, the perfection
Speaker 1: that something could listen closely enough for long enough to
Speaker 1: capture a specific human voice and play it back with
Speaker 1: that kind of accuracy. It wasn't mimicry, the way a
Speaker 1: parrot mimics a parrot reproduces sounds. What I heard in
Speaker 1: the ravine reproduced a person. The difference is the difference
Speaker 1: between a photocopy and a portrait painted by someone who
Speaker 1: knew the subject. There was nuance in it, character, identity,
Speaker 1: and underneath the fear buried so so deep I almost
Speaker 1: didn't recognize it. There was something else, grief, because the
Speaker 1: thing in the woods had given me my brother's voice.
Speaker 1: And for two or three seconds before the fear kicked in,
Speaker 1: I'd felt the warmth of hearing Wade call my name
Speaker 1: the way he called it when I was ten, standing
Speaker 1: at a waterfall, the way he called it at every
Speaker 1: family dinner and every holiday gathering and every phone call
Speaker 1: for the past thirty six years. And then the warmth
Speaker 1: had curdled into something cold and wrong because it wasn't Wade.
Speaker 1: It was something wearing Wade's voice like a mask. And
Speaker 1: the loss of that warmth, the way it was offered
Speaker 1: and then taken away, felt like a small death, like
Speaker 1: something precious had been counterfeited and would never quite sound
Speaker 1: the same again. I didn't call Wade for two weeks
Speaker 1: after the encounter.
Speaker 2: I couldn't.
Speaker 1: Every time I picked up the phone, I thought about
Speaker 1: hearing his voice and not being sure.
Speaker 2: If it was real.
Speaker 1: The phone would be in my hand, his name right
Speaker 1: there in the contacts, and I'd freeze because what if
Speaker 1: I called and the voice that answered wasn't quite right?
Speaker 2: What if whatever was in the woods.
Speaker 1: Had changed something in my brain, some calibration that let
Speaker 1: me distinguish the real from the replicated, And now I'd
Speaker 1: never be sure again. It was an irrational fear. I
Speaker 1: knew that Wade was in Winston Salem. Whatever answered his
Speaker 1: phone would be him, But irrationality is the permanent tax
Speaker 1: that these experiences charge you. Once something impossible happens, the
Speaker 1: boundaries of what you consider possible shift and they don't
Speaker 1: shift back. I finally called him on a Sunday afternoon,
Speaker 1: sitting on the porch with Bowie at my feet, the
Speaker 1: meadow gold and quiet in front of me. The phone
Speaker 1: rang twice, and when he answered with his usual Hey brother,
Speaker 1: I had to sit down because my legs went soft.
Speaker 1: It was him, really him, warm and gravel voiced and alive,
Speaker 1: and two hundred miles away in Winston Salem, asking me
Speaker 1: if I'd watched the Panthers game. The relief was so
Speaker 1: intense it almost hurt, like blood returning to a limb
Speaker 1: that's been asleep. Every cell in my body recognized that
Speaker 1: voice as real, as authentic as the original that Something
Speaker 1: in the woods had copied, and the recognition came with
Speaker 1: a secondary wave of anger that caught me off guard,
Speaker 1: anger at the thing on the ridge for taking something
Speaker 1: that was mine, that was ours, the specific acoustic signature
Speaker 1: of my brother's love, and using it as a tool, allure,
Speaker 1: a manipulation. Wade's voice wasn't a commodity. It was the
Speaker 1: sound of every Thanksgiving dinner, every late night phone call
Speaker 1: after Dad died, every hey brother across thirty six years
Speaker 1: of shared history, and something had taken a recording of it,
Speaker 1: or a memory of it, or whatever the biological equivalent
Speaker 1: of those things is, and played it back to me
Speaker 1: in a ravine while I was alone and vulnerable. I
Speaker 1: told him I hadn't watched the game. We talked about
Speaker 1: the kids. Owen had made the travel baseball team and
Speaker 1: Wade was coaching on weekends. Maggie had started piano lessons
Speaker 1: and was already picking out melodies by ear, which Wade
Speaker 1: attributed to Colleen's side of the family, because lord knows
Speaker 1: it didn't come from us. We talked about Colleen's promotion
Speaker 1: at the hospital where she worked as an administrative coordinator
Speaker 1: about a deck Wade was building on the back of
Speaker 1: his house and whether he should use cedar or composite.
Speaker 1: I told him cedar, always cedar, and he said he
Speaker 1: knew I'd say that because I was a traditionalist who
Speaker 1: refused to accept that technology had improved on wood.
Speaker 2: He was right.
Speaker 1: I was normal things, safe things, the kind of conversation
Speaker 1: that rebuilds the walls after something has tried to knock
Speaker 1: them down. He asked me how the mountain was treating me.
Speaker 1: I told him it was good. I told him the
Speaker 1: leaves were past peak but still pretty. I told him
Speaker 1: Bowie was fat and happy. I told him I'd been
Speaker 1: doing some work on Earl's old workshop and that the
Speaker 1: table saw needed a new fence. I didn't tell him
Speaker 1: that something in the worst had stolen his voice and.
Speaker 2: Used it like bait.
Speaker 1: I didn't tell him that his name had been spoken
Speaker 1: by something that wasn't human in a ravine a quarter
Speaker 1: mile from my cabin. I didn't tell him that I'd
Speaker 1: spent two weeks afraid to call him because I wasn't
Speaker 1: sure I could trust my own ears anymore. I still haven't,
Speaker 1: and I don't know if I ever will. Some things
Speaker 1: you carry alone because the weight of sharing them would
Speaker 1: break something in the person you're sharing with. Wade would
Speaker 1: want to help, he'd want to fix it, and there
Speaker 1: is no fixing this. There's only living with it. There's
Speaker 1: one more detail about that day that I haven't mentioned yet,
Speaker 1: and I've saved it for last because it's the part
Speaker 1: that made me realize fully and finally that what I
Speaker 1: was dealing with wasn't just an animal with an unusual
Speaker 1: vocal ability. When I got back to the cabin after
Speaker 1: the ravine encounter, before I went inside, I walked around
Speaker 1: to the back of the house to check something. Call
Speaker 1: it paranoia, Call it due diligence. Call it the new
Speaker 1: habit of a man who'd come home to scratch marks
Speaker 1: on his wall and smudges on his windows, and couldn't
Speaker 1: go inside anymore without making sure nothing had visited while
Speaker 1: he was gone. Stay tuned for more Backwoods Bigfoot stories.
Speaker 1: We'll be back after these messages. I walked the perimeter
Speaker 1: of the cabin the way I'd been doing since the night.
Speaker 1: The thing had breathed against the wall and tapped the window.
Speaker 1: The north side was fine, The logs were unmarked. The
Speaker 1: ground undisturbed. The south side was fine. The zinias along
Speaker 1: the foundation were starting to brown with the season, but
Speaker 1: nothing had been trampled or pushed aside. The west side
Speaker 1: facing the meadow was fine. The porch was empty. The
Speaker 1: chairs were where I'd left them. On the east side,
Speaker 1: near the back door, I found it. There's a patch
Speaker 1: of bare ground on the east side of the cabin
Speaker 1: where the rain run off from the gutter has kept
Speaker 1: the soil exposed and damp for decades. Earl had talked
Speaker 1: about putting in a drainage channel there but never got
Speaker 1: around to it. The soil in that spot is a
Speaker 1: reddish clay, the same type i'd the first set of
Speaker 1: tracks in on the game trail the previous summer. When
Speaker 1: it's wet, which it usually is, it holds impressions beautifully
Speaker 1: pressed into that patch. Centered in the bare ground, like
Speaker 1: it had been placed there intentionally, was a footprint, one
Speaker 1: single alone. It was facing the back door. The toes
Speaker 1: pointed straight at the threshold, which was maybe three feet away.
Speaker 1: The heel was toward the forest. The positioning was so deliberate,
Speaker 1: so perfectly aligned with the door, that it looked like
Speaker 1: someone had stood there facing the cabin and held the
Speaker 1: pose long enough to leave a full weight impression. I
Speaker 1: crouched down and examined it. Then I went inside, got
Speaker 1: my tape measure and the spiral notebook, came back out
Speaker 1: and documented everything. Sixteen and three quarter inches long heel
Speaker 1: to toe, slightly smaller than the tracks I'd found on
Speaker 1: the game trail after the rainstorm in my first summer,
Speaker 1: which had measured seventeen and a quarter I'd wondered about
Speaker 1: that discrepancy, since it could mean the footprints were from
Speaker 1: different individuals, one larger one slightly smaller, or it could
Speaker 1: mean the same individual had been walking differently, striking the
Speaker 1: ground at a different angle, leaving a slightly shorter impression,
Speaker 1: depending on gait and speed and the softness of the substrate,
Speaker 1: I didn't know enough about foot morphology to say which
Speaker 1: explanation was more likely. The width of the ball of
Speaker 1: the foot was about six and a half inches, which
Speaker 1: was also slightly narrower than the game trail prints. The
Speaker 1: toes were clearly defined, five of them, individually, pressed into
Speaker 1: the clay, with visible separation between each one. The big
Speaker 1: toe was offset inward in the same way I'd seen before,
Speaker 1: and the second and third toes were the deepest, suggesting
Speaker 1: they bore the most weight. During the stands, there was
Speaker 1: a defined arch, higher than you'd expect in a flat
Speaker 1: footed animal, and the heel impression was round and deep,
Speaker 1: about an inch and a half at its lowest point.
Speaker 1: That depth told me something in that particular soil, at
Speaker 1: that moisture level. I tested my own weight by standing
Speaker 1: in the same patch and measuring the depth of my
Speaker 1: boot print. My print, at one hundred and ninety pounds,
Speaker 1: went about half an inch into the clay. This print
Speaker 1: was three times deeper, which meant the thing that left
Speaker 1: it was conservatively three times heavier than me five hundred
Speaker 1: pounds maybe more. Standing on one foot motionless at my
Speaker 1: back door, I measured everything twice. I wrote it all down,
Speaker 1: and this time I took photographs. I pulled out my
Speaker 1: phone and shot the print from every angle I could
Speaker 1: think of, directly overhead, from the side, at an oblique
Speaker 1: angle that showed the depth relative to the surrounding soil,
Speaker 1: with the tape measure beside it for scale, with my
Speaker 1: own bootprint next to it for comparison.
Speaker 2: I took seventeen photographs. I still have.
Speaker 1: Every single one one print facing the door, made while
Speaker 1: I was gone on It hadn't tried to get in,
Speaker 1: It hadn't tested the handle or pushed the frame. It
Speaker 1: had walked to my back door, stood there long enough
Speaker 1: to leave a full weight impression in saturated clay, and
Speaker 1: then walked away. I scanned the surrounding ground for a trail,
Speaker 1: additional prints, a direction of approach or departure.
Speaker 2: Nothing.
Speaker 1: The grass around the cabin was thick enough to absorb
Speaker 1: footfalls without recording them. The single print existed in isolation,
Speaker 1: a solitary statement in the only patch of ground soft
Speaker 1: enough to capture it. I crouched beside that print for
Speaker 1: a long time, long enough that Bowie came around the
Speaker 1: corner to check on me and sat down a few
Speaker 1: feet away, watching me look at the ground. He sniffed
Speaker 1: in the direction of the print once briefly, and then
Speaker 1: turned away. Whatever scent was there, he'd already cataloged it.
Speaker 1: He knew what had made it. He just didn't seem surprised.
Speaker 1: And I thought about what Cliff had said, that this
Speaker 1: thing didn't just watch me. It knew me, It knew
Speaker 1: my brother's voice, it knew I'd be gone that morning.
Speaker 1: Walking the back acreage. It knew which door I used most,
Speaker 1: because I used the back door ninety percent of the time,
Speaker 1: coming and going from the workshop, the garden plot, the
Speaker 1: firewood pile. And while I was in the ravine, stumbling
Speaker 1: up a slope in a panic because something was calling
Speaker 1: my name in a voice i'd trusted.
Speaker 2: My entire life.
Speaker 1: The thing or one of the things, had come to
Speaker 1: my cabin, stood at my door and left a single
Speaker 1: calling card in the mud. Not a threat, not a warning,
Speaker 1: a statement, I was here while you were there, and
Speaker 1: the door was this close. I thought about that for
Speaker 1: a long time, about what it meant to stand at
Speaker 1: someone's door while they were away. In the human world,
Speaker 1: that's a message. It's the locked car with a note
Speaker 1: on the windshield, the empty chair pulled out at the
Speaker 1: dinner table, the business card slipped under the door. It says,
Speaker 1: I found you, I know where you live. I chose
Speaker 1: not to go further. It occupies the space between visit
Speaker 1: and violation, and it does so deliberately. Whatever left that
Speaker 1: print understood that space. It understood that the print would
Speaker 1: be found. It understood that I would measure it, photograph it,
Speaker 1: think about it, and it left it anyway, on the
Speaker 1: one surface around the cabin that would hold the impression,
Speaker 1: in the one spot I would check before going inside.
Speaker 1: I covered the print with a piece of plywood and
Speaker 1: left it. I wanted to preserve it in case I
Speaker 1: changed my mind about keeping all of this to myself.
Speaker 1: I checked on it the next morning and it was
Speaker 1: still sharp, still holding its shape.
Speaker 2: Under the wood.
Speaker 1: But two days later, after an afternoon thunderstorm blew through
Speaker 1: and dumped an inch of rain in an hour, I
Speaker 1: lifted the plywood and found the edges softened, the toes blurred,
Speaker 1: the heel shallow and indistinct, another piece of evidence that
Speaker 1: the mountain gave me and then took back. But this
Speaker 1: time I had the photographs, seventeen of them on a
Speaker 1: phone I still own, in a folder I've never deleted.
Speaker 1: That's where I'll leave story three. There's more coming, a
Speaker 1: lot more. The winter tracks, the night the dogs wouldn't
Speaker 1: come back, the woman across the creek who knew things
Speaker 1: she shouldn't have known.
Speaker 2: But those are for another time.
Speaker 1: Right now, I need to stop, because talking about Wade's voice,
Speaker 1: even in writing, brings it all back. And some nights
Speaker 1: when the wind hits the cabin from the east, and
Speaker 1: the trees sound like they're whispering. I can still hear
Speaker 1: it my name in his voice, coming from somewhere I
Speaker 1: can't see Garrett. That was story three from Garrett, and
Speaker 1: I want to take a moment here to talk about
Speaker 1: what he described, because vocal mimicry is one of the
Speaker 1: most controversial and for me, one of the most compelling
Speaker 1: aspects of Sasquatch and counter reports. I've received accounts of
Speaker 1: mimicry from witnesses all over the Appalachian Range and beyond.
Speaker 1: People hearing their spouses voice called them from the woods,
Speaker 1: people hearing a child crying in areas where no children
Speaker 1: should be, people hearing their own name spoken by something
Speaker 1: that sounded like a family member, a coworker, a friend.
Speaker 1: The reports are remarkably consistent in their details. The voice
Speaker 1: is always someone the witness knows intimately, the accuracy is
Speaker 1: always described as uncanny, not approximate, and the apparent purpose
Speaker 1: is always the same to draw the witness closer, to
Speaker 1: lure them off a trail, away from a cabin, into
Speaker 1: terrain where they'd be at a disadvantage. That word lure
Speaker 1: comes up in report after report, and it raises a
Speaker 1: question I don't think we fully reckoned with. If these
Speaker 1: things can replicate a specific human voice, that means they've
Speaker 1: listened to that voice enough to learn its characteristics. That
Speaker 1: means sustained observation, and sustained observation means they're paying attention
Speaker 1: to us in a way that goes far beyond territorial awareness.
Speaker 1: They're studying us, cataloging us, learning the specific sounds that
Speaker 1: would make a specific person drop their guard.
Speaker 2: A few years back.
Speaker 1: I interviewed a hunter who heard wood knocks while he
Speaker 1: was out hunting. He felt drawn to walk in the
Speaker 1: direction of the knox. When he would stop, the knox
Speaker 1: would start again. This went on for almost an hour.
Speaker 1: He ended up face to face with a massive sasquatch.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a voice like Garrett experienced, but the hunter
Speaker 1: felt that the creature was luring him further into the
Speaker 1: woods for what. He's not sure, but he felt that
Speaker 1: if he didn't have the rifle in his hands, he
Speaker 1: may not have made it out to share his encounter
Speaker 1: with me. The disorientation Garrett described is the other piece
Speaker 1: that lines up with a body of existing research. In
Speaker 1: my nearly forty years of looking into this subject, I've
Speaker 1: heard dozens of accounts from experienced outdoorsmen who suddenly couldn't
Speaker 1: find their way on land they knew like the back
Speaker 1: of their hand, always in the context of a close encounter.
Speaker 1: Whether that's infrasound, fear respond or something else entirely, I
Speaker 1: don't claim to know, but the pattern is there, and
Speaker 1: Garrett's description of it, the way he called it e
Speaker 1: rasure rather than confusion, is one of the most precise
Speaker 1: articulations of it I've ever heard. And then there's the
Speaker 1: footprint by the back door, one print facing the threshold,
Speaker 1: made while Garrett was in the ravine hearing his brother's voice.
Speaker 1: That detail landed on me like a weight when I
Speaker 1: first read it, and it hasn't gotten any lighter since.
Speaker 1: Because if you take Garrett at his word, and I do,
Speaker 1: then what happened on October eleventh wasn't just a single encounter.
Speaker 1: It was a coordinated event. Something drew him to the
Speaker 1: ravine with his brother's voice, while something else, or the
Speaker 1: same something at a different time, visited his cabin and
Speaker 1: left a mark.
Speaker 2: At the door.
Speaker 1: That's planning, that's strategy, and that's a level of cognitive
Speaker 1: complexity that should give every one of us something to
Speaker 1: think about. Next time. Garrett's going to tell us about
Speaker 1: story four, the Winter Tracks, what he found in the
Speaker 1: snow around his cabin after a heavy January storm, and
Speaker 1: what those tracks told him about how often the Thing
Speaker 1: on the ridge was visiting when he thought it was gone.
Speaker 1: Stay safe, stay curious, and I'll talk to you next time.
Speaker 1: Di